Summary

Chapter 1. Hang, an “exported worker” from Vietnam living in Moscow, has just received a message from her housekeeper that her uncle is sick. Hang does her best to go about her day and ignore the message imploring her to “come quickly” but eventually her homesickness and a promise to her mother force her to make the trip via train.

She boards the train and settles in; she closes her eyes and is overwhelmed by her homesickness. She remembers standing in her mother’s ancestral house spooked by all of the dark corners. The women are sitting in the courtyard eating and gossiping and it is in overhearing their conversation about a man named Tan that she realizes who her father was.

Chapter 2. While on the train to visit her sick uncle, Hang remembers the stories from her mother during the Section for Land Reform. Hang...